


A Change of Tune

by sylvermists



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: and some mentions of juno mick and the peter boy, anyway i wanted my two favorite boss ladies to meet and then this happened, that's it have fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 05:21:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15478542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylvermists/pseuds/sylvermists
Summary: Agent Sasha Wire receives a surprising offer in a surprising place.





	A Change of Tune

There are places in Hyperion City where not even Dark Matters has eyes. They are few, and far between, but if you have the patience, and the time, to look, you’ll find them.

And Sasha Wire has had all the time in the world.

Besides, it’s easy to disappear when there’s never anyone waiting for you. The tricky thing is coming back. But Sasha’s always managed that. So what’s one more night?

What’s one more trial, just to prove that you’re tough enough to play with the big kids?

 

The Hyperion City mausoleum isn’t what it once was, which is to say, it never fails to let her down. But it’s the closest thing to home that Sasha’s known in a long time, which is heartbreaking in a way that is surprisingly hard for her to put her finger on. Of course, that applies to most aspects of her life, something which she’s found it to be best not to dwell upon.

She has more pressing business to attend to, after all. Assuming that she’s managed to evade Agent Burgess’ attention, she has maybe half an hour before alarms will start going off. Assuming she hasn’t would be a waste of time, since every scenario that follows that inevitably ends with her dead in a gutter with anything that could possibly have identified her corpse burned off, but it would be even more foolhardy to believe herself above being found out.

And for all she knows, this could just be another of his twisted little tests.

But that’s another thing she shouldn’t dwell on for longer than absolutely necessary. Not here. Not with Annie.

 

Sasha has visited this place enough times to find her sister’s compartment by touch alone. It’s small, the smallest one available, because, well, her uncle wasn’t made of money. Not that he paid for any of it, but he made sure that she was aware of just what he thought of his niece spending every last cent of her savings on securing a place for an empty urn. He made sure that she suffered for it too, but those scars are old, and long since healed over. But every time her fingers brush the marble alcove, long since worn smooth by twenty-five years worth of lost touches, it tears a fresh wound.

If she were Juno, she would wear that wound like a prize, gaining some kind of morbid pleasure from the world seeing her shame. If she were Mick, she would bury it beneath yet another half-mad scheme, betting everything she had on another doomed venture, hoping, praying, that she’d lose enough of herself this time.

If she were Annie, this would be an entirely different story.

But she’s just Sasha. And that has never been quite the person she needed to be.

 

Juno told her once, way back when, that there were too few pieces of her scattered in too many places. He could be quite the poet when he wanted to be, which was always, and when he was as drunk as he’d been then he was almost a good one. Almost. He had been right, too, but it wasn’t as much a revelation as an uncomfortable reminder. Because of course she knew that she was spread to thin, and somehow still not far enough. She was never  _ quite  _ there, never  _ quite _  enough, never _q_ _ uite  _  what everyone else wanted her to be.

Too proper for Mick, too composed for Juno, too distant for Annie and too demanding for her uncle. She grew up too early, and realized it too late. By then, she’d already lost everyone who’d ever mattered to her. By then, she was already with Dark Matters.

That’s where she learned how devastatingly lonely it is to be perfect.

 

It’s almost a relief when there’s a click, and the mausoleum is plunged into darkness.

 

The sound of strange, featherlight footfalls against the marble floor means a safe retreat back to dependable, familiar territory. The clattering of  _ something _ just behind her means that Sasha gets to do what she does best, and not worry about anything else until its done. Depending on how things turn out, she might not have to worry about anything else ever again.

Maybe she has a little bit of Juno in her, after all.

 

Her blaster is still set to stun. Let her bastard of a boss chide her for it all he likes once all this is done, but she’s not risking it, especially not in here. Not in front of Annie.

Sentimental nonsense, Burgess will call it. He’ll shake his head sadly, and say that he expected better of one of his top agents.

The thought of that almost makes Sasha want to toss her blaster aside and face this unknown trial without it.

Almost.

After a moment’s hesitation, she reaches down and switches the setting.

 

The second she does, there’s a voice from the shadows.

“There you go. For a moment there, I was sure I’d caught the wrong Sasha Wire.”

 

Soft. Languid. Smooth as silk, but with an edge to it that’s as clearly a warning as the faint scent of perfume that drifts through the pitch black mausoleum, as if on cue. Sasha doesn’t recognize the voice, but she knows the style all too well.

“Kanagawa.”

“Half-right, Agent Wire. You’ll have to do better than that if you want to-”

“No games. You tell me what you want, and if I don’t like it, well, it’s been a while since the last proper culling of your clan, so-”

“Oh, forgive me. I’ve been spending far too much time with my stepson these last few weeks. But you’re absolutely right. We’re grown women. There’s no need for theatrics.”

Min Kanagawa snaps her fingers, and light floods back into the chamber. For a few seconds, neither of them speak, both women silently appraising the other. One apex predator recognizes another, after all, and even in a hunting ground as large as Hyperion City, more than one in the same place means a shift in the natural order.

But if all Min wanted was a battle of wills, why now? And why here?

 

Then the other woman does the absolute last thing Sasha expects her to. She reaches behind her back, and pulls out a small music box. It’s a cheap contraption, and after years of frequent use it’s mainly held together by pieces of string and the willpower of a stubborn child, but it’s still the most valuable thing that Min could have offered her.

Because it isn’t just any music box. It’s _A_ _ nnie’s _  music box. But-

“Your uncle sold all her things before she’d even been declared officially missing,” Min muses, turning the box over in her hands. “He sounds like a real piece of work, that man. How did you stand him?”

Sasha’s mouth is dry. “Where did you find that?”

“But this particular token wasn’t packed away in that little box, was it? No, Annie never let this out of sight. It was given to her by her hero, after all. And that meant that it was with her when-”

“When she died,” Sasha’s voice is breathless, and she quickly clears her throat, cursing herself for even beginning to fall for this woman’s low tricks. “There’s no need to sugarcoat it, Min. My sister died 25 years ago, because of me. I’ve made peace with it. I’ve moved on. And no matter how many toys you’ve had your men fish out of a dumpster in some Oldtown slum, you won’t make me-”

“But aren’t you a little bit curious?” Min’s voice is gentle, coaxing, as if she’s speaking to a child. “Behind those big, agent shades and that Dark Matters calling card, isn’t there a part of you that would like to know just how it all went-”

“No,” Sasha interrupts her. “No, I don’t. The past and the dead are both best left buried.”

“Oh?” Min raises one gracefully curved eyebrow. “Then you don’t want to know what other, very interesting, finds my people have made-”

“The last interesting find your people made ended with your husband’s face torn off.”

Min smiles. “So the Agent bites too, I see.”

“Enough.”

“Of what?”

“Of this. All of it.”

Sasha gestures at her, and at the the mausoleum around them, and at whatever hidden camera Burgess is undoubtedly watching them through. Because this is just too well thought-out to be just random chance. It even ties in nicely with his last little pop quiz.

 

Min’s sighs. Very slowly she raises both of her hands in a gesture of mock surrender. Then she reaches forward, and plucks a small device from the crack between two compartments. She studies it for a moment, and then crushes it between her fingers.

“It is a test, then?”

Min shrugs. “It was. But your boss really should have known better than to trust a Kanagawa.”

“And so should I?”

“Of course. If you  _ had _ fallen for that bait, well, let’s just say that I would have Dark Matters have their way with you afterwards. And while I admit that I don’t know much about this shadowy organization of yours, I’m guessing  _ that _ wouldn’t have been too pretty?”

“But I didn’t.”

“But you didn’t.”

“So what happens now?”

“Now,” Min smiles even wider. “You work for me.”

 

What happens next depends on who you ask.

 

The Dark Matters operative sent to take the rogue Agent Wire out learns, with the tip of a knife angled so that the smallest amount of pressure means an instant death, that nothing has changed. Their organization has needed a fresh pair of eyes within the Kanagawa clan for months now, and letting the matriarch of the family believe that she’s outsmarted Dark Matters will only make her careless.

 

Agent Burgess guesses, privately, that there are other forces at work here, but Wire’s record is the cleanest anyone’s ever seen, and she gets the job done. And if some of the intel she provides should prove faulty, well, it’s still something. So he lets her continue with whatever little game she’s playing, but makes sure that everything concerning her passes by his desk. And if her return mail happens to contain some secrets of its own, carefully tailored just for the Kanagawas, of course, then that’s just life, isn’t it?

 

Min Kanagawa isn’t stupid. She’s the matriarch of the largest crime empire in Hyperion City, after all, and Sasha Wire is far too smart to turn against her old employer at the drop of a hat. No, there’s something in it for her, just like Min guessed there would be. Just because she doesn’t know just what it is yet doesn’t mean that she should let it stand in her way. Dark Matters have practically served their informant’s identity to her on a plate, after all. It’s almost too easy.

 

Mick Mercury is appalled. He cannot comprehend why Sasha would ever make that choice, and more importantly, he doesn’t see the ripples it causes.

 

Juno sees them. It takes him a little while, but he sees them. He doesn’t forgive her, but he understands.

 

Min and Burgess both think they’re fooling her. And maybe they are, at least in every way that matters to them. But while they’re congratulating themselves on how smart they’re both being, and crafting new tidbits of information to feed the other via this link between them that Sasha has become, life continues out in Hyperion City. And with two of the largest meddlers out there at least partially occupied with their latest puzzle, all of its residents can breathe a little freer. It’s not much, maybe, but it’s something.

 

The role of the noble, self-sacrificing hero was always Juno’s in their childhood games, after all. But if there’s something that Sasha’s learned from her time at Dark Matters, it’s that the real work happens on the sidelines.

 

And six months after the twenty-fifth anniversary of Annie Wire’s death, the Old Town restoration project is kicked off. To both of their surprises, Min Kanagawa and Agent Burgess find that their respective organizations had no part in it, despite the intel they’ve both been supplying the other with. But so be it. The project has a long road ahead, and they really ought to start working on what they should tell Agent Wire about their plans for it.

 

That’s when Sasha receives the final reaction to her choice. A bouquet left on her doorstep, entirely made up of flowers artfully sculpted out of the finest glass money can buy. A little on the nose, maybe, but she appreciates the gesture. So much, in fact, that she keeps it in the same drawer as Annie’s music box. Someday, she’ll confront Min about that, and maybe learn, finally, what actually happened in the Old Town Munitions Factory, on that day so many years ago. But not yet. She’s got work to do, after all.

 

Because for the first time in twenty-five years, Sasha Wire is exactly the person that she needs to be.

  
  
  
  



End file.
